


(Butt) Hurt

by TetrodotoxinB



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: 5-0 is not OSHA approved, Butt wounds, Gen, Mild medical care, Past Child Abuse, Protective Danny, Revelations, Scarring, Steve POV, Work-related injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 11:50:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17406374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: When Steve lands butt-first onto a pile of broken glass on a case, the last thing he expects is to be having a conversation with Danny about the way he was raised.





	(Butt) Hurt

**Author's Note:**

> [ICouldDoThisAllDay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/pseuds/icoulddothisallday) wanted me to call this "The Platonic Care and Taking of Steve McGarett's Ass, as told by Danny Williams." I declined because that's a terrible idea.
> 
> Unbeta'd because what is patience.

“You really ought to get that looked at. The whole seat of your pants is bloody, boss,” Kono says as she stares unabashedly at Steve’s ass.

Chin smirks and eyes Kono. “You looking at the boss’s butt, cuz?”

Kono holds her hand out, pointing at Steve’s butt, “It’s covered in blood. He’s clearly injured. If I were going to ogle him, this would not be the time I would choose.”

“Oh, so you’re saying you would ogle Steve’s butt?”

“Guys,” Steve cuts in, “not that it isn’t great that you’re both fighting over my ass, but I think it’ll be fine. I’m gonna head back to HQ, get cleaned up, and Danny and I’ll meet up with you after you go talk to O’Doole.”

“Have fun, Danny!” Kono calls as Steve hobbles off towards the Camaro. He can hear Chin chuckling along with her as Steve hisses when steps off the curb.

But as much as he hurts — falling on that broken glass was not how he wanted today to go — he does have to admit that if the tables were turned he would definitely be giving Chin or Kono just as much shit.

*****

“Pal, I do not think that you should be trying to clean up your butt-wounds on your own,” Danny says.

Steve glares in the direction of Danny’s voice even though he knows Danny can’t see him. It was bad enough having to lie face down in the backseat of the Camaro, but Steve is not about to ask Danny to pick bits of glass out of his ass cheeks in the HQ locker room.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Steve hisses for the eighth time as he pinches himself with the tweezers and misses the glass. Doing this in the mirror is not working out as well as he had hoped.

“Yeah, ‘fuck.’ Steve, I know you are all about your privacy, but butt cheeks are butt cheeks and I promise that yours, while clearly popular with the ladies, are not so spectacular that I will die simply by beholding them. Let me help you, please. I am begging you, it physically pains me to listen to you picking at open wounds with tweezers and hurting yourself when I could just-”

“Jesus Christ, okay.”

“Okay, what?” Danny asks and Steve is ready to punch Danny for being so deliberately obtuse.

“Okay, you can come pick glass out of my butt, Daniel.”

“There. Was that so hard?” 

Steve groans and rinses the tweezers in the sink. Danny deftly plucks them from Steve’s hand as he rounds the corner, and then goes to sit on the bench by the lockers.

“Waddle over here,” he orders.

Steve readjusts his boxer briefs so that he’s at least not shuffling towards Danny with his junk hanging out. 

Danny’s managed to pick out a couple of surface-level pieces of glasses when he finds it important to say, “If you fart in my face-”

“You’re the one who wanted to be eye-level with my ass. You’ll take what I give you,” Steve shoots back. He desperately does not want to fart in Danny’s face.

“You offer to help a guy with his ass-glass and this is the thanks you get,” Danny mutters as he runs his finger over a small laceration while he checks for more glass.

Steve’s snappy retort dies on his tongue as Danny slowly pulls free another chunk of the offending material. 

“Shit.”

“Yeah, I bet that hurt. Hang on, babe. I think there’s only a couple more.”

Steve clenches his fists and does his best not to make any undignified noises. The last thing he needs to do is whimper while Danny is gently touching his ass.

“Alright, hang tight. I’m gonna grab a rag and some alcohol,” Danny says as he gets up.

Never once has Steve been more grateful that 5-0 has their own small locker room. There’s nothing Steve needs less in the world than some rookie beat-cop coming and seeing Steve standing around with his very bloody butt hanging out for the world to see while Danny rummages in the first aid cabinet. 

“This is gonna hurt like a bitch. Maybe you oughta lay down,” Danny suggests as he continues digging in the supply cabinet.

Steve has to admit that pouring alcohol on open wounds is its own special brand of awful. Once the pain hits, he can’t see how he’s going to manage this without contorting himself in some weird direction and then pitching over because his pants are around his knees.

“Alright,” he agrees.

Danny nods. “Just go ahead and strip. That way you can run for the shower if it gets to be too much.”

Steve is steadfastly determined not to run for the shower if only to avoid Danny seeing him run naked. There had been a bit of that in BUD/S and SERE. It was undignified and unpleasant as hell. Steve has never wanted to relieve that, especially not in front of someone who isn’t stuck in the same situation.

Danny keeps his back turned in some parody of privacy, but it’s not like it matters because he’s gonna get a close-up view of Steve’s ‘nads when he’s face down on that bench. Swallowing his pride, Steve strips out of his pants and boxer briefs, which are ruined anyway, and tosses them in the trash. He feels stupid standing there in just a t-shirt so he shucks that, too. 

When he turns around, Danny has laid out a towel over the bench. Steve knows it’s to keep both the bench and also himself clean, but he’s just glad he doesn’t have to put his junk directly on the cold, hardwood bench. 

Carefully, he situates himself on the bench and only then does Danny return. Steve wraps his arms tightly around the underside of the bench and grips the edges of it.

“Alright, I’ll clean as I go but I’m just gonna go ahead and pour it on there and let it set. Let me know if you need to make a break for it or want me to rinse it.”

Danny’s standing there with a cup of water in his hand, a roll of paper towels under his arm, and the entire wound-care case in the other hand. 

“Yeah, alright. Just get on with it.”

“‘Just get on with it.’ You know I’m beginning to think you like pain. You get shot. Do you want pain meds? ‘Oh no, they might make me sleepy. They might compromise me in the field.’ See-” Danny pauses to pour the alcohol on Steve’s thoroughly lacerated rear, “I think you’ve been enjoying wallowing in your pain the entire time.”

Steve grits his teeth and the tips of his fingers dig painfully into the wood of the bench. “Yeah, you caught me,” he rasps out.

“Aha! He admits it. You’re masochist. Are you a sadist, too? Is that why you like getting me shot so often? You just enjoy pain in general?”

But for as much shit as Danny’s giving Steve, he’s being awfully careful as he wipes away the blood and cleans the cuts.

“I enjoy getting you shot because you’re fucking annoying,” Steve mutters.

“I’m sorry, did you say something to the person holding the alcohol, Steven?” 

“I said, ‘I hope you get shot in the balls.’”

There’s a beat of silence and then just the slightest drip of something cold on his right butt cheek. He braces himself for the sting, but then the drops rolls down, cool and soothing where the alcohol had washed into the cuts.

“See unlike you, I am not cruel to my friends,” Danny explains as he goes back to wiping.

“It’s a different kind of cruelty.” Steve feels a little more empowered to give Danny shit now that he’s sure there isn’t more alcohol pending as retaliation. 

Danny grumbles something unintelligible and probably rude, and continues his wiping. Steve doesn’t respond to the mumbled nonsense immediately and after a moment, he feels like he’s lost the thread of their ribbing altogether. He breathes through his nose and tries to focus elsewhere to put down the pain. 

Danny keeps working quietly, wiping and applying bandaids or butterfly sutures as needed. Slowly, the pain begins to ebb as Danny pours water bit by bit to loosen up some of the dried blood and to wash away the burn of the alcohol. According to Danny they’re on the home stretch when abruptly everything stops.

Steve can feel the tension in the room swell like a physical thing, and Danny is so still that the small hairs on the back of Steve’s neck begin to stand up.

“Danny?” he asks cautiously.

Danny swallows audibly. “Who?”

Steve looks over his shoulder to tell Danny that it was obviously Michaels, he broke the glass right in front of them, but then he sees how pale Danny’s gone. And he realizes.

“Dad,” he answers softly, turning his face away. “He didn’t ever break the skin but it scarred anyway.”

Danny swipes ever so carefully as Steve’s left hip where a mix of blood, alcohol, and water has trickled down and off onto the floor. 

“You don’t have to be so careful. It’s not like it still hurts,” Steve finally says. He’d rather get this over with and the kid gloves hurt in a way that Steve can’t quite bear.

“Sure,” Danny answers, resuming his previous ministrations, but his voice cracks on the word.

It’s not another minute and Steve is up, fishing a change of clothes out of his locker while Danny cleans up their impromptu operating theater. Neither of them says anything further about Danny’s butt-related revelation until they’re in the car, Steve again ceding the driver’s seat to Danny.

“How often?” Danny asks quietly once they’re zipping down the H1.

“Bad enough to scar? I’m not really sure — maybe once every couple months.”

“How long-” Danny cuts himself off like there’s more to say but he can’t bring himself to. In the end he lets the question stand on its own.

“Started when I was maybe seven or eight. Went on until Mom died.”

In all honesty, he hadn’t realized it scarred until he went to ANA. There were group showers and some of the boys pointed it out. Steve, ever quick on his feet, told them it was stretch marks; a completely realistic excuse for a 6’ 2” sixteen year old. By the time he enlisted the marks had faded enough that no one said anything. No one until Danny. 

Out of the corner of his eye Steve can see how Danny grips the steering wheel until his hands go white. Danny would never hit Grace like that. It’s not even a question. It’s a nice thought, the idea of parents like Danny, but it’s decades too late to matter and Steve puts the thought out of his head. There’s no reason to wish for anything other than what was; it can’t be changed now.

“Did Doris…”

Steve swallows. “No, not herself, but she definitely encouraged Dad.”

“That’s not right, not any of it. Just because she never laid her hands on you doesn’t mean she’s not just as much at fault.”

And yeah, Steve knows, at least in an abstract kind of way. It was an unavoidable realization once he started doing this job, but at the same time it was just how it was to grow up in the McGarrett house. Calling it abuse is something he can do objectively but he can’t _feel_ it, especially not when John was a great dad in other ways. Like every other time this has come up, it doesn’t really go anywhere and Steve doesn’t have any great revelations. 

He can, however, see Danny gearing up for more so Steve heads him off at the pass.

“I know Danny. I’ve known for a while. It’s just the way things were. Can we not- can we not make a big deal out of it?”

Danny’s mouth snaps shut and he nods sharply. “Yeah, okay, Steve. We can do that.”

“Thank you.” And Steve means it, too. He’s glad Danny respects his boundaries, but he’s glad, too, that he has a friend like Danny — one who is enraged on his behalf, even if he’s thirty years too late.

They turn onto the Pali Highway and Danny suddenly says, “I’m still telling Kono that you look like a Chippendale when you bend over the sink and stick your ass out.”

It startles a laugh out of Steve. “Yeah, sure.” Because honestly, Danny has to say something and this is better — and a whole lot funnier — than the truth.

*****

The next morning, Steve finds a jar on a his desk.

_All Organic: Scar Cream_

Steve promptly picks it up and goes to Danny’s office.

“Danny, I appreciate the gesture but this won’t do anything for decades old scarring. Let it go.”

Danny looks up from his laptop and cocks his head. “See, if I remember correctly, and I’m pretty sure I do, I spent a good long while staring at your ass yesterday. Do you remember why?”

“Because I got glass in it,” Steve answers evenly.

“That’s right. And, because I am a good friend, I went to get you something to take care of your butt-wounds. If you read the instructions, it says ‘do not apply to broken skin.’ So it’s not for now, but maybe you can use it in a couple of weeks. You’re welcome.”

Steve stares for a moment at Danny and then the jar. “Okay. Thanks.” It’s symbolic or something, but Steve understands all the same what Danny means.

The emotional undercurrents of the conversation abruptly disintegrate when Danny says, “I’m not helping you apply it.”

“But you were so gentle before!” Steve protests.

Danny looks up from his laptop again, narrows his eyes, and Steve starts cackling as he turns, leaving Danny’s office. He can just hear Danny shouting, “You can bleed to death next time!” as the door closes. 

“What’d you do to him this time?” Chin asks with a sly grin.

Steve puts on his innocent face and shrugs. “Nothing. I swear.”

Kono purses her lips. “No one believes that. Whatcha got there?”

“Scar cream. Danny got it for me. I think he just can’t imagine my fantastic ass being all scarred up.” And given yesterday’s events it’s both funny and maybe a little too true. 

Chin laughs and Kono says, “Oh, yeah? He enjoy tending to your battle wounds yesterday?”

“Well, I mean, that might be something you have to ask him. I know I sure didn’t,” Steve says as he pretends to gently rub at his wounds.

“I will be sure never to do that,” Chin says with a chuckle. 

Kono nods. “Same. But, uh, good luck with the cream. I hope it treats fungus, too. Be like a two-for-one.”

“That’s it. You’re demoted,” Steve says and turns to go into his office. 

Steve returns the jar to his desk and sits gingerly. While the relentless ribbing was definitely expected given the nature of his wounds, Steve can’t help but think that maybe, out of all the times he’s been hurt on this job, this time might actually have been worth it.


End file.
